Hmong paper

Hmong paper

Critical analysis of the barriers facing the Lee family as they seek health care for their daughter Lia

Dr. Neil Ernst decided to call child protective services when Lia’s parents were reluctant to give her medicine. He thought it was important for Hmongs to understand that there were certain elements of medicine that Americans understood better than Hmongs did and that there were certain rules they had to follow with their kids’ lives. He wanted the word to get out in the community that if they deviated from that, it was not acceptable behavior. Ernst could have been arrested for not reporting it. There were some possible alternatives to calling Child Protective Services such as having a nurse visit the Lees three times daily to administer the medications, but this thought did not occur to Dr. Ernst and seemed unreasonable at the time. I can suspect that it would have been too expensive to have a nurse visit three times a day.   The reason Lia’s parents did not want to give their daughter the medicine was that they believed like other Hmongs that people with epilepsy are caught by a good or bad spirit which makes them fall to the ground and while their under siege they get messages from the gods. Many people in their culture with epilepsy become cultural healers or shamans. It is unfortunate that the cultural misunderstanding between the Lee Family and Dr. Neil and also the language barriers got in the way of what could have been resolved much more easily. Although Dr. Neil’s plan of letting CPS handle it worked out for him, it did not work out for Lia for she had more seizures at her foster home with the medicine than at home with missed and half dosses. The reason is because she did not want to be separated from her parents, and the emotional damage from the separation. Some people would say it was selfish that Dr. Ernst did not at least try to use a nurse to administer the medication. I believe if I was Him that I would try sending a nurse first to...